They had gone through the country that Audubon drew. Twenty miles from the green marshes where he waited for birds to fly onto and bend the branch right in front of his eyes. Mr Audubon drew until lunchtime, sitting with his assistant who frequently travelled with him. The meal was consumed around a hamper, a bottle of wine was opened with as little noise as possible in order not to scare the wildlife away.
*
I sit with this room. With the grey walls that darken into corner. And one window with teeth in it. Sit so still you can hear your hair rustle in your shirt. Look away from the window when clouds and other things go by. Thirty-one years old. There are no prizes.
Credits
Dude Botley’s monologue appears in Martin Williams’ Jazz Masters of New Orleans and appears with permission of the Macmillan Publishing Company.
The picture of the dolphins’ sonograph with explanatory note is reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons from Mind in the Waters, Joan Maclntyre, editor. Copyright © 1974 Project Jonah.
Louis Jones interview, John Joseph interview, Bella Cornish interview and Frank Amacker tape digest used with permission of the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University Library.
Sections from ‘A Brief History of East Louisiana State Hospital’ used with the kind permission of Lionel Gremillion.
The photograph of Bolden’s band originally belonged to Willy Cornish, is now in the Ramsey Archive, and is reprinted with permission from Frederic Ramsey jnr.
Acknowledgements
Many points of historical information were found in ‘New Orleans Music’ by William Russell and Stephen Smith, from Jazzmen, edited by Frederic Ramsey jnr and Charles Smith (Harcourt Brace, 1939). And in Martin Williams’ Jazz Masters of New Orleans (Macmillan, 1967).
Al Rose’s Storyville, New Orleans (University of Alabama Press) also contained interesting social and historical information.
E.J. Bellocq’s photographs in Storyville Portraits (Museum of Modern Art), edited by John Szarkowski, were an inspiration of mood and character. Private and fictional magnets drew him and Bolden together.
Credits and Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all those at the Jazz Archives at Tulane, especially Richard Allen who helped me a great deal when I was there. The original work done on the tape digests at Tulane was by Paul R. Crawford.
I would also like to thank Lionel Gremillion, Superintendent of the East Louisiana State Hospital, who was of much help to me, showing me files and letting me read his history of the hospital.
There were, for me, the important landscapes of Holtz Cemetery, First Street, and Baton Rouge to Jackson.
Of interest is a rare 10″ LP, ‘This is Bunk Johnson Talking …’, issued by William Russell’s American Music Label, which has Bunk Johnson whistling the way he remembers Bolden playing.
While I have used real names and characters and historical situations I have also used more personal pieces of friends and fathers. There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts have been expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.
— M.O.
About this Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter. We hope they will give you a number of interesting angles from which to consider this lively, haunting and seductive novel.
1. Although he is one of jazz music’s legends and the finest cornet player of his time, little is actually known about Charles “Buddy” Bolden or his life. Why do you think Ondaatje chose Bolden as his protagonist? What does the author mean when he says, “Did not want to pose in your accent but think in your brain and body—”? (this page)
2. The story is told in many fragments and many voices: Actual accounts of Bolden’s life and performances, oral history, lists of songs, biographical facts, narrative, dialogue, interior monologues, psychiatric reports, bits of poetry and lyrics, the author’s own voice. How does Ondaatje’s arrangement of the different ‘voices’ affect the way you perceive Bolden’s life? Why do you think he chose this way of telling his story?
3. New Orleans and vicinity at the turn of the century is the setting for the novel. Consider the places where the action occurs: N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor, the river, Shell Beach, the Brewitts, Webb’s cottage, the streets of Storyville, Bellocq’s studio, Bolden’s home with Nora and the children, the mental hospital. Consider some of the metaphorical or symbolic aspects of these settings. What do they reveal about Bolden’s journey and his inner life?
4. Bolden’s life “had a fine and precise balance to it, with a careful allotment of hours.” (this page) He was barber, publisher of The Cricket, cornet player, good husband and father, and an infamous man about town. Do you agree that his life was balanced? What upset the balance?
5. “This is the power I live in— They trust me with the cold razor at the vein under their ears. Dreams of the neck. Gushing onto the floor and my white apron.” (this page) Does Bolden wield this power, or is he, like his audience, under its sway?
6. “Robin and Jaelin and me. I saw an awful thing among us. And that was passion could twist around and choose someone else just like that—. We had no order among ourselves. I wouldn’t let myself control the world of my music because I had no power over anything else that went on around me, in or around my body.” (this page-this page) Consider the complex relationship between power, control, fear, and desire in the novel. What role do each of these play in Buddy’s ensuing madness?
7. “He watched himself go back to the Brewitts and ask if he could stay with them. The silent ones. Post music. After ambition.” (this page) Do you see Bolden’s move to the Brewitts as positive or negative? “The silence of Jaelin Brewitt understood them all.” (this page) How do Jaelin Brewitt and Bolden differ? What do they have in common? Does Bolden admire Jaelin?
8. “Then Bolden did a merciless thing. For the first time he used his cornet as jewelry. After the couple had closed their door, he slipped in a mouthpiece—. With every sweet stylised gesture that he knew no one could see he aimed for the gentlest music he knew—Music for the three of them, the other two in bed, not saying a word.” (this page) What does it mean that he used his cornet as jewelry, and why was it merciless?
9. “The Pickett incident had made him unpopular. Buddy didn’t leave at the peak of his glory you know.” (this page) Explore what happens to Bolden during the Pickett incident. Is it a turning point for Bolden?
10. Water in all its forms—liquid, rain, mist, ice—is a recurring image in the novel. Think of the ice and the mist on the windows of N. Joseph’s Shaving Parlor and what happens after the fight with Tom Pickett. Or of Bolden’s departure by boat. Or how, at the Brewitts, Bolden immerses himself in the bath at the beginning and end of his stays. What does the water imagery tell us about what is happening to him? Is water a safe element for Bolden?
11. “E.J. Bellocq’s photographs—were an inspiration of mood and character. Private and fictional magnets drew him and Bolden together.” (from the author’s acknowledgements, this page) Bolden says of Bellocq, “He was the first person I met who had absolutely no interest in my music.” (this page) Why was Bolden attracted to Bellocq? Why does Nora blame Bellocq for what happens to Bolden? Do you think she’s right?
12. What does Bolden mean when he says, “We were furnished rooms and Bellocq was a window looking out”? (this page) Why does Bolden want to break windows? And why does a “wall of wire barrier glass” go up between Robin and Bolden after Webb comes to get him “with all his stories about me and Nora, about Gravier and Phillip Street”? (this page)
13. Nora’s mother’s favourite Audubon birds: the Purple Gallinule with “thoughts of self-destruction”; the Prophet Ibis, “obviously paranoid”; the Cerulean Wood Warbler, “drunk on Spanish Mulberry”; and Anhinga, the Water Turkey which “would hide by submerging—forgetting to breathe, and
so drown.” (this page-this page) Discuss these birds in light of Bolden’s personality.
14. The novel is divided into three main parts. Explore how the style of each section reflects the content. Does each section have something different to convey? Could the novel be compared to a musical composition?
15. “That is the first time I ever heard hymns and blues cooked up together— The picture kept changing with the music. It sounded like a battle between the Good Lord and the Devil—. If Bolden stops on the hymn, the Good Lord wins. If he stops on the blues, the Devil wins.” (this page) What does this tell us about Bolden and his music?
16. Think of Bolden’s final performance in the parade. Who is the woman who dances before him? What happens to him during his final performance, and why, when it’s over, does he say to himself, “What I wanted.” (this page)
17. “What he did too little of was sleep and what he did too much of was drink and many interpreted his later crack-up as a morality tale of a talent that debauched itself.” (this page) Was Bolden’s descent into madness as simple as that? Does the novel help us understand what happened to him?
18. What is the “slaughter” referred to in the book’s title?
19. Bolden’s return to New Orleans: “on the third day old friends came in, shy, then too loud as they entertained him with the sort of stories he loved to hear, stories he could predict now. He sat back with just his face laughing at the jokes.” (this page) What has changed in Bolden? Is his decision to return and play in the parade life-affirming?
20. “While I have used real names and characters and historical situations—There have been some date changes, some characters brought together, and some facts—expanded or polished to suit the truth of fiction.” (from the credits and acknowledgements, this page What does the author mean by the truth of fiction? Can you think of other novels, by Ondaatje or others, that have borrowed from historical record to tell a story?
BOOKS BY MICHAEL ONDAATJE
COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER
This novel brings to life the fabulous, colorful panorama of New Orleans in the first flush of the jazz era; it is the story of Buddy Bolden, the first of the great trumpet players, some say the originator of jazz, who was a genius, a guiding spirit, and the king of that time and place.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76785-5
THE ENGLISH PATIENT
Winner of the Booker Prize
During the final moments of World War II, four damaged people come together in a deserted Italian villa. As their stories unfold, a complex tapestry of image and emotion is woven, leaving them inextricably connected by the brutal circumstances of the war.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-74520-4
RUNNING IN THE FAMILY
In the late 1970s, Michael Ondaatje returned to his native country of Sri Lanka. Recording his journey through the druglike heat and intoxicating fragrances of the island, Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family.
Memoir/Literature/978-0-679-74669-0
ALSO AVAILABLE:
Anil’s Ghost, 978-0-375-72437-4
The Cinnamon Peeler, 978-0-679-77913-1
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, 978-0-679-76786-2
Divisadero, 978-0-307-27932-3
Handwriting, 978-0-375-70541-0
In the Skin of a Lion, 978-0-679-77266-8
Lost Classics, 978-0-385-72086-1
Vintage Ondaatje, 978-1-4000-7744-1
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com
Coming Through Slaughter Page 11